Fortune cookies are well known in the Chinese Restaurant Community. These are flat pieces of dough which are folded over, by man or machine, to seal them up, and a message is manually inserted therein. The dough used is a flat dough that resembles one layer of phyllo dough. Several patents have been found that relate to cookies of one type or another which are capable of carrying a message. Some of the patents that turned up during the course of a patent search include:
PATENT #INVENTORDATE0,229,163MillsJun. 22, 18801,936,835FairchildNov. 28, 19332,003,578ClementJun. 4, 19353,265,016CheungAug. 9, 19663,410,691StanleyNov. 12, 19684,752,493MorikiJun 21, 19884,797,291Pierce et al.Jan. 10, 1989D0,315,435KirkpatrickMar. 19, 1991D0,361,735BakerMar. 10, 1998D0,444,613AmicoJul. 10, 2001D0,475,173FrazeeJun. 3, 20036,780,453SmithAug. 24, 2004
None of these patents, however, relate to the process or the hardware of the instant invention, and none of them create a cookie where the dough has risen, yet alone an opening is present, for the insertion of a paper carrying a message.